Making bulk compost

The lawn clippings, tree branches and piles of pruning you remove from your yard, may end up back at your place in the form of mulch and compost.
That is, if you take it to Canberra's green waste recycling sites.

The musty, pungent smell of decomposing greenery is thick in the air as you walk around the green waste recycling site.

People of all types bring in the unwanted growth from their garden, and leave it in big communal piles in the middle of the site.

From there, a large pitchfork machine picks it all up and feeds it in to a huge and expensive machine which mulches it all up with ease.

The large dark piles of mulch are left to 'burn off' in the composting process, which kills off any undesirable plant diseases and insects.

Once that has happened, it is fed in to a long tubular sorter, which tumbles the compost in to three different sized piles. One is ideal for mixing into soil to enrich it, one is a mid-sized compost, and finally there is a large size which is great for mulch.

From there, it makes its way back in to the parks and gardens of Canberra from whence they came.